Despite once being hailed as a role model, Charlie Chan hasn’t held up well in the nearly one hundred years since his introduction. Many now see the “honorable Chinese detective” for what he is: a caricature plucked from the imagination of a white man. Earl Derr Biggers, to be precise, a Harvard graduate and former newspaperman who happened to stumble upon an interesting item in a Honolulu paper about a real-life Chinese detective named Chang Apana.
The only thing Charlie Chan has in common with the man who inspired him is his ability to reel in the bad guys. Chang Apana was a small, trim man, skilled with a bullwhip like an Asian Indiana Jones, steely-eyed in his pursuit of Honolulu’s criminal element. He was a cowboy, a “paniolo,” in the words of his biographer, Yunte Huang. Not the kind of guy who would be caught eating one too many jelly doughnuts.
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